Distributed sensor networks may have a number of applications in various fields, including examples such as area monitoring of a battlefield; environmental monitoring for permafrost or water temperature; as well as industrial monitoring of waste or ground water. One application, in particular, may include monitoring energy consumption in one or more buildings. However, sensor networks, such as the networks described above, may have a limited available bandwidth and limited available energy to transmit data packets at each node. Thus it may be desirable to optimize inter-node communication to reduce overall energy use and to minimize network traffic.